Google should consider suspending its automated Adwords service during times when the media is covering mass tragedies. Here’s a screenshot from a Chicago Trib story on the Newtown shootings that I just opened.

Maybe someone at the Trib noticed it, since reloading the page brings up a cellphone ad.

Consider this excellent holiday gift for your family, close friends, small relatives, and students. Only $40 in softcover. Think of the smiles on their faces when they unwrap this—priceless!

Seriously, though, I’ve edited more than a couple of collections in my career and this text if far and away the one I’m proudest of. Thanks to my co-editor, Stuart Selber; the great contributors we had (listed below); and David Morrow and the rest of the staff at U of Chicago Press.

The Verge has an excellent article (including the interview about along with more text and images) on Survival Research Lab’s Mark Pauline.

The operatic scale and pyrotechnic intensity invites comparisons to Dante, Bosch, Cronenberg, Grand Guignol, Gotterdammerung, and Mad Max. “It’s as if several junkyards’ worth of our refuse had risen up to let out an immense collective scream,” wrote The Boston Globe’s Leighton Klein. With titles such as “An Explosion of Ungovernable Rage” and “Ghostly Scenes of Infernal Desecration” and “Further Explorations in Lethal Experimentation” and “A Calculated Forecast of Ultimate Doom: Sickening Episodes of Widespread Devastation Accompanied by Sensations of Pleasurable Excitement,” the shows — over 50 thus far, from San Francisco to Copenhagen to Tokyo — don’t so much confront audiences as assault them. The machines deliver a message: despite your safety, there are indeed things in this world that can kill you.

I missed it, but MTV turned 31 on Wednesday. Mental Floss has coverage, plus the first video aired, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles.

Ironic, given that over the ensuing 31 years, MTV killed music videos.

Random Fact: In my first year of college at Michigan Tech, the lead stoner on our floor, a guy named Snark, played us a cassette recording of “Video Killed the Radio Star” and had us convinced for several days that his band had recorded the song.)